VICTORIA — The B.C. Coroner's Service is urging people to wear seatbelts after a study of fatal crashes in the Interior found too many people weren't buckled up.
The study of 85 deaths from 2010 found only 47 per cent of the people involved were wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash.
Most of those who died were male drivers.
Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe says studies throughout North America have consistently shown that wearing a seatbelt is the best way to avoid death in a motor vehicle crash.
She says there are many examples of people dying when they were thrown through windshields, ejected from a vehicle or tossed around inside.
Lapointe says some people die even if they are wearing a seatbelt, but in those cases crashes are often so severe that no amount of safety equipment could have saved the occupants.
The study of 85 deaths from 2010 found only 47 per cent of the people involved were wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash.
Most of those who died were male drivers.
Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe says studies throughout North America have consistently shown that wearing a seatbelt is the best way to avoid death in a motor vehicle crash.
She says there are many examples of people dying when they were thrown through windshields, ejected from a vehicle or tossed around inside.
Lapointe says some people die even if they are wearing a seatbelt, but in those cases crashes are often so severe that no amount of safety equipment could have saved the occupants.
